Open-Source Phonon-2 ASR Model Beats Whisper Large at Just 164MB

Fermion Research released Phonon-2, a 164MB open-source ASR model claiming higher accuracy than Whisper Large at 10x the speed, with MLX quantization for on-device Apple Silicon deployment.

2026-09-30 ~ 2026-10-01 · 3 related posts

• Phonon-2: 164MB open-weights ASR beats Whisper Large at 1/10th the size — julianweisser · 2026-09-30
• Fermion open-sources Phonon-2: a 164MB speech model matching 2.5GB teachers, 1h audio in 20s on MacBook Air — solyarisoftware · 2026-09-30
• Phonon-2 on-device ASR model with QAT low-bit quantization lands on HF trending — FermionResearch · 2026-10-01